The Other Scottish King: Robert the Bruce

England feud with Scotland started with Edward I's compaign against Scotland and continued into the reign of Edward II.

While Edward I was pitted against William Wallace, Edward II's nemesis came in the form of Robert the Bruce.

Robert the Bruce's rise to power wasn't straightforward, as he had to contest with his Scottish rival, John Comyn, for the kingship.  He eventually murdered John Comyn in the process.


Robert the Bruce's greatest victory against the English was at the Battle of Bannockburn.

After watching the videos, Tiger was inspired to make a Scottish armour out of a few pieces of red cloth, aluminum foil, and some masking tape.

Naturally, there has to be an epic battle to put the armour to good use.  This time Tiger took the role of  a Scot who was killed by the pike on the battlefield.  It has taken a few years of mock battles for Tiger to be able to take on the role of one who is defeated.  Compared to the previous few years when he felt absolutely invincible (or that he could never be wrong about anything), he is starting to show some maturity and awareness of his own ego, and is ready to acknolwedge that he, like everyone else, has some areas of weaknesses.

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme #107
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/11/14
3. Entertaining and Educational - Art Masters 
4. Collage Friday - Homeschooling Girls and Boys
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with Cat Surgeries and Early Mornings
6. Homeschool Mother's Journal (3/15/14)

A Royally Dysfunctional Family

The life of Edward II, son of Edward I, seems to be quite dysfunctional, as shown in the following documentary (from 16 to 22 minutes):

His close relationship with Piers Gaveston is a source of much speculation about both men's sexuality, although some scholars believe that there is no conclusive evidence to support it, since both men married women and had children in their respective marriages.

Nonetheless, the two men's closeness (and Edward II's comparative political incompetence compared to his father) incurred the wrath of the barons and Edward II's wife, Isabella of France (see the first 31 minutes of the following documentary):

The deposition of Edward II by his queen, Isabella (with the help of her lover, Roger Mortimer), was at that time, unprecedented and unimaginable, especially if one considers the position of the majority of women in the Middle Ages.

Battling with the Welsh

Before Edward I became "The Hammer of the Scots", he went hammering at the Welsh.  The way that he went about having an upper hand over the Welsh was to build a formidable fortress in the form of Conway Castle.

Given that the castle had been built for the purpose of battle, we were curious to about how its structure provided a strategic advantage to Edward I's victories over the Welsh. 

The Battle Castle series appears to be just what we need to learn about this.

I bought the DVD set and we've learnt loads watching the episode that is dedicated to examining Conway Castle.  After watching the documentary I thought we ought to do something hands-on, so I suggested that we build a model of a castle.

Tiger wanted to have reenactment battles with his model knights instead.  I am not a big fan of playing with model knights, to be honest.  Believe me, I have played with model knights and soldiers to reenact many, many, many (to the power of n) battles, from the ancient times to modern warfare.   Far too many than should be reasonably expected of a normal mother, really.

After my troops had surrendered (experience has taught me that it's the only way I could end the battles), we calmed ourselves down by making the model.  Homeschooling in this household involves much negotiation and give-and-take on both sides.

I used the model making sessions to have Tiger tell me what he has learnt about Conway Castle from the documentary that makes it a stronghold for Edward I's Welsh campaigns (in addition to Caernarfon Castle), its significant features, and how it compares to the 'standard' castle model that we were putting together.

The model was quite fiddly to put together, due to its many small parts and lack of assembling instructions.  However, we managed it in the end.  It's very satisfying when our models work!

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/18/2014)
2. History and Geography Meme: Country Studies
3. Collage Friday - Flip Flops and Challenge on Winter Break
4. Entertaining and Educational: National Engineer's Week
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Cheek Cells
6. Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/22/14)

Warwolf

During our visit to the Tower of London, we saw a reenactor dressed up as a medieval priest who gave us an overview of the history of the Tower as a royal palace, a prison, and a fortress.  A full-sized replica trebuchet was on site to demonstrate the power of this medieval siedge weapon.  It took five adults to launch the trebuchet.

The trebuchet is of special interest because the weapon has been traced back to being first used by Edward I during his siege of Stirling Castle.

While Tiger and I discussed about medieval siege weapons, I was given a quick education by Tiger of the differences between a trebuchet and a mangonel.  If your knowledge of medieval weaponry is like mine, i.e. that you think all catapulting machines work in the same way, you will benefit (as I have) from watching the two clips below:

1) Trebuchet

2) Mangonel

We learn much about the trebuchet from the following clip:

Why do we want to know so much about the trebuchet?  The main reason is that Tiger is passionate about everything that has to do with warfares and weaponry, historical and otherwise.  After hours of listening and watching experts talk about this medieval war machine, we decided it was time to build one ourselves.

It took us a few days to put the trebuchet together...

and when it was fully assembled, all of us thought it looked beautiful!

Naturally, we had to test whether it to see how good it is.

Unfortunately, our first few attempts at launching the trebuchet didn't go too smoothly.

The projectile either didn't go in an arc path, or was trapped in the launch net, or was launched backwards (gasp!).  It was slightly frustrating to have to work out what went wrong.  Not wanting to give up now, after we had spent so much time putting the model together, we pressed on with more tweaking, taking into consideration the following factors that might affect the success of our launch:

• tension of string
• length of string
• weight of projectile
• size of projectile
• weight of counter-weight load

It's very exciting when it finally worked!

 

Tiger spent the rest of the day trying to break the record for the longest distance the projectile would go.  So far, his record is at 17 feet.

When we heard that Warwick Castle has the world's largest working trebuchet, we had to go and see it at work!

Check out the size of these real, medieval trebuchet balls made of solid stone!

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme #100
2. Collage Friday - Boxes, Schoolwork & Squirrels
3. Entertaining and Educational - Teaching Kids to Tie Their Shoes
4. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with No Time
5. Homeschool Mother's Journal {November 23, 2013}
6. Hip Homeschool Hop - 11/26/2013

The Scots and the English Coronations

Edward I is best known as "The Hammer of the Scots" for his numerous attacks and conquest of Scotland.  In many ways, he was the first king since the Norman conquest to instill a sense of nationalism amongst the English.  His use of nationalistic sentiments for his various conquests of Wales and Scotland created the same effect in those areas, most notably in Scotland via William Wallace, more popularly known as Braveheart.

It has been interesting for us to learn from the different perspectives of the conflict between Edward I and the Scots.

We learnt previously that the coronation chair used by English monarchs was commissioned by Edward I and has been on display in the Westminster Abbey.

Westminster Abbey has been the place for coronations of the English monarchy since William the Conqueror.

We attended a workshop at the abbey where the children found out what went wrong at the coronations of William the Conqueror and Queen Victoria.  During the workshop, the children also learnt about the symbolism and significance of various items used during the coronation process: the sceptre, the Crown Jewels, the robe, and the sword.

Our tour of the abbey was focused on kings, queens and the coronation, so we were given a guided tour of specific places inside the abbey related to our theme: the tombs of medieval kings and queens, the Tudor Lady Chapel, the burial place of a family of siblings -- Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

While Henry III extended the abbey and had it built to the scale it is today, the coronation process is highly symbolised by two items: the coronation chair and the Stone of Scone which Edward I had snatched from the Scots during his campaigns.

We had a close look at the restored coronation chair as part of our guided tour of the abbey.  The Stone of Scone has been returned to Scotland for safekeeping, but it will be borrowed from the Scots for future coronations.  Photo taking is not allowed inside the abbey but you can get a very good idea of it from the documentary here:

This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/22/13
3. History and Geography Meme #96
4. Collage Friday - A Productive Week
5. Entertaining and Educational - Learning with Music
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Battle Against Illness
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {October 26, 2013}

Edward "Longshanks"

Compared to his father, Henry III, Edward I appears to have led a much more eventful life.  A quick summary of his life is shown in the following documentary (from 9 mins to 17 mins):

We started our study with a narration from Our Island Story, typed and pasted into the accordian timeline that we have been working on for years.

This was followed by watching relevant episodes from two excellent DVDs.  Each was done from a slightly different perspective by two respectable English historians.  One thing that I always emphasise to Tiger in our study of history is to learn from as many sources as possible before drawing our own conclusions with regards to how history is to be interpreted or represented.

We also played many, many rounds of History Heroes.  We first played this game after reading Suji's review a few years ago.  When we first played the game in 2011, Tiger was at the beginning of his British history study so he didn't get very far beyond the Normans.  Now, after two years of continuous reading from different sources of British history (mostly in his own leisure time), he is able to win each game against me.  Regular readers of this blog are aware of how s-l-o-w-l-y we go in history around here so in that sense, Tiger has been "forced" to read up on anything that interests him outside of our 'school time'.

I remember that the Tower of London has a Medieval Palace with Edward I's bedchamber preserved there (although he hardly ever used it, considering that he mostly lived in encampments due to his numerous campaigns), so off we went.

Since the focus of our visit was on Edward I, we headed straight to the Medieval Palace.

There is not much to see of Edward I's bedchamber apart from the space it was supposedly located, as well as a few original timber frame and wall plastering.

Since Edward I was always out and about, I don't suppose he had much use for his bedchamber at the Tower anyway.  Nonetheless, it was good to have had a look at it:

The rest of the Medieval Palace has been well preserved, with much information about the medieval kings and courtly life dotted around.

The small chapel in the Medieval Palace was particularly interesting as it has marks a spot in front of the altar where Henry VI allegedly died.

Before we left, Tiger made a medieval knight's helmet out of paper to mark our visit.

The Tower is so steeped in history that I am quite sure we shall be back for future visits.


This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/15/2013
3. History and Geography Meme #95
4. Collage Friday: Exciting News about a Great Journey
5. Entertaining and Educational - Oct 18
6. TGIF Linky Party #99
7. Homeschool Review and Resource Link-Up
8. Weekly Wrap-up: The One in Which I Felt Super Productive

He's Not Very Exciting

We took some time to resume our study of English history, which we had left off with the last of the House of Angevin, King John.

We use Our Island Story for our chronological study of the monarchs.  Usually we listen to the relevant chapters before Tiger narrates them to me to be typed out and placed into our accordian timeline.

As start with our first Plantagenet king, Henry III, I found that there was not much going on with his political life, primarily because he was crowned as a nine-year-old and effectively had people around him (the barons, his wife, his relatives) controlling his life most of the time.

However, we did find the first nine minutes of the following documentary to be a very useful summary of the events surrounding the circumstances of his life:

Even though Henry III did not achieve much in terms of political life (hence not very exciting by medieval standard in Tiger's eyes), his crowning glory came in terms of building the most politically-important religious building in England, Wetsminster Abbey:

It is unusual for us to find the life of a monarch to be uninteresting, but we honestly did not find Henry III's to be memorable.  This is especially so since Tiger has a special interest in warfare, and Henry III is not known for his warrior skills.  His son, however, is much more of a warrior king and thus captures Tiger's imagination more readily.